^74.46" 

Besib 


THE  BOSTON  FIRE 

November  9,  1872 


BUREAU  OF 
COMMERCIAL  AND  INDUSTRIAL  AFFAIRS 


BOSTON  CHAMBER  OF  COMMERCE 


FACSIMILE  FROM  "REPORT  OF  THE  COMMISSIONERS  APPOINTED 
TO  INVESTIGATE  THE  CAUSE  AND  MANAGEMENT  OF 
THE  GREAT  FIRE  IN  BOSTON." 


Statement  of  the  number  of  Engines,  Hose,  and  Hook  ^  Ladder,  Carriages,  with 
the  nuTiiher  of  Men  and  amount  of  Hose  that  attended  the  great  Ftre  of  Nov.  Othf 
from  out  of  town. 


Hook  it  Lad- 

Feet 

Chief  Engineer. 

City  or  Town. 

Engines. 

Com- 

der  Com- 

Men. 

of 

^  ti  n  1 0  s  • 

 . 

Hose. 

P.  H.  Raymond  .... 

Cambridge,  Mass. 

3 

2 

1 

75 

1,500 

Wm.  E.  jDclano  .... 

Charlestown, 

2 

3 

0 

60 

2,000 

Samuel  Hutcliins   .  .  . 

Chelsea, 

<( 

1 

2 

0 

85 

1,000 

W.  \V.  Kimball  .... 

Lynn, 

2 

2 

0 

27 

1,400 

Salem, 

n 

2 

1 

0 

67 

2,000 

it 

1 

1 

0 

11 

700 

Alfred  Keniiekjr.   .  . 

Brookline, 
W.  Box  bury, 

a 

■1  (hand) 

1 

1 

69 

1,100 

C  A.  Belfurd  ...... 

(( 

2 

1 

0 

21 

1,200 

James  K.  Hopkins    .  . 

Somerville, 

it 

1 

3 

0 

60 

1,200 

Waterlown, 

i( 

1 

1 

0 

21 

800 

Newton, 

(( 

2 

2 

0 

51 

1.750 

Worcester, 

tt 

2 

3 

0 

60 

3.800 

Thomas  J.  Borden    .  . 

Fall  River, 

2 

4 

0 

60 

2.200 

On-slow  Gilmore    .  .  . 

Stonehara, 

<( 

1 

1 

0 

18 

850 

Maiden, 

(< 

1 

2 

0 

54 

2,000 

John  \i.  Morton  .... 

Melrose, 

ti 

2 

1 

0 

15 

400 

Benj.  H.  iSumner  .  .  . 

Med  ford, 

it 

1 

2 

0 

40 

1,000 

Chas.  H.  Davis  .... 

Wakefield, 

tt 

2  (hand) 

0 

0 

8? 

750 

Wm.  11.  'remple    .  .  . 

Beading, 

1 (hand) 

1 

0 

105' 

500 

A.  H.  liowland,  jr.   .  . 

New  Bedford, 

it 

1 

1 

0 

26 

700 

^fartihall  Barks  .... 

Walthani, 

1 

1 

0 

14 

700 

Oliver  K.  Green  .... 

Providence 

3 

3 

0 

30 

1,700 

A.  E.  Jlendriek  .... 

New  Haven, 

a 

1 

1 

0 

22 

900 

Daniel  A.  Delamoy  .  . 

Norwich, 

a 

2 

3 

0 

166 

2,300 

8.  L.  Mar.ston  

Portsmouth,  N.  H. 

] 

1 

0 

45 

1,100 

B.  C.  Kendall  

Manchi'>ter, 

2 

2 

0 

63 

1.200 

Biddeford,  Maine. 

0 

2 

0 

176 

3,000 

  1 

Started  and  got  as  far 
Portsmouth,  N.  11. 

A.  J.  Cummingg    .  .  . 
K.  G.  I'arrott,  Com'dant 

Portland, 

I 

1 

0 

12 

1,000 

Charlestown  Navy  Yard 

2 

1 

81 

1.000 

T.  'J\  S.  J.aidley,  " 

Watertowti  Arsenal, 

1 

2 

0 

25 

1,100 

E.  I'.  Jx-ivis,  Chief  Eng. 

Hyde  Park, 

1 

1 

0 

55 

1,200 

The  Great  Boston  Fire 

ByJOHNW.DECROW 


NOVEMBER  9th  and  10th  will 
mark  the  fiftieth  anniversary 
of  the  Great  Boston  Fire  of 
1872,  by  far  the  worst  conflagration 
which  has  ever  visited  the  city  and 
which  before  it  was  subdued  had 
travelled  over  an  area  of  about  sixty- 
five  acres  in  the  heart  of  the  city, 
had  consumed  more  than  seven  hun- 
dred and  fifty  buildings,  and  caused 
a  loss  approximating  seventy-five  mil- 
lions of  dollars. 

To  the  great  majority  of  our  active 
business  men  of  today,  the  fire  is  but 
a  hazy  story,  the  details  of  which  are 
little  known.  In  the  popular  mind 
there  are  two  outstar\ding  features — 
the  fire  started  in  a  hoop  skirt  fac- 
tory and  the  horses  in  the  city,  in- 
cluding those  of  the  fire  department, 
were  suffering  from  an  epidemic  of 
sickness  called  "epizootic." 

Boston  in  1872  was  a  city  of  some- 
thing over  250,000  persons  but  in  con- 
sidering these  figures  we  must  re- 
member that  Charlestown,  West  Rox- 
bury  including  Jamaica  Plain,  Bright- 
on and  Hyde  Park  were  independent 
municipalities  so  that  for  comparison 
with  the  present  day  population  we 
must  include  the  population  of  these 
places  which  will  bring  the  figures, 
according  to  the  census  of  1870,  up 
to  296,635. 

It  may  be  interesting  in  order  to  get 
a  true  viewpoint  of  the  growth  of 
Greater  Boston  in  the  last  half  cen- 
tury to  know  the  population  of  some 
of  the  closely  adjacent  municipalities, 
according  to  the  figures  of  the  census 
of  1870  and  census  of  1920,  the  figures 
before  the  dash  being  the  population 
in  1870,  the  figures  after  the  dash  be- 


ing the  population  in  1920.  Brookline 
6,650—37,748;  Cambridge  39,634— 
109,694;  Somerville  14,685—93,091; 
Chelsea  18,547—43,184;  Everett  2,220 
—40,120;  Maiden  7,367—49,103;  Re- 
vere 1,197—28,823;  Milton  2,683—9,- 
382. 

Boston's  figures  are  748,060  accord- 
ing to  the  1920  census  so  that  by  the 
same  comparison  Boston's  own 
growth  has  been  from  296,635  to  748,- 
060.  Electric  cars,  automobiles  and 
the  telephone,  all  of  which  have 
played  a  part  in  this  concentration 
of  population  and  all  of  which  are 
now  an  important  part  of  our  every 
day  life,  were  then  unheard  of. 

Nearly  all  the  streets  in  the  sec- 
tion of  the  city  devastated  by  the 
fire  were  narrower  than  they  are  to- 
day. Franklin  Street  extended  only 
from  Washington  Street  to  Federal 
Street,  and  Hawley  Street  was  a  nar- 
row lane.  Fort  Hill  had  been  levelled 
but  was  not  built  over.  Post  Office 
Square  did  not  exist.  The  Post  Of- 
fice was  in  the  Merchant's  Exchange 
Building  on  State  Street  where  the 
present  Exchange  Building  now 
stands.  The  westerly  portion  of  the 
present  Post  OflQce  building  was  ap- 
proaching completion  and  played  a 
part  in  checking  the  fire  on  one  side. 
Evidence  of  this  may  be  seen  to- 
day in  the  chipped  granite  block  be- 
low the  memorial  tablet  on  the  Dev- 
onshire and  Milk  Street  corner. 

The  business  section  of  the  city 
had  been  gradually  extending  toward 
the  south,  and  Summer  Street,  which 
but  a  few  years  before  had  been  a 
residential  section,  more  or  less 
marked   the   southerly  boundary  of 


Courtesy  of  the  Atheneum 


The  above  is  a  reproduction  of  an  etching  made  by  Sidney  L.  Smith 
of  the  building  on  the  southeasterly  corner  of  Kingston  and 
Summer  streets  in  1872,  in  which  the  Boston  Fire  origi- 
nated.    Only  through  the  efforts  of  Harold  Murdock, 
author  of  "1872 — The  Great  Boston  Fire,"  was  an 
old  bill  head  of  the  firm  of  Tebbetts,  Baldwin 
&  Davis,  finally  secured  with  a  picture 
of  the  structure  engraved  upon  it. 


4 


the  wholesale  district.  Trinity  Church 
stood  on  the  corner  of  Summer  and 
Hawley  Streets  partly  on  land  which 
is  now  in  Hawley  Street  and  partly 
on  land  now  occupied  by  Filene's. 
The  streets  leading  to  the  south  from 
Summer  Street  were  partially  occu- 
pied by  brick  dwellings  used  largely 
for  boarding  and  lodging  houses.  The 
best  of  the  business  buildings  were  of 
brick  or  granite,  many  with  French 
or  Mansard  roofs  with  wood  finish. 

William  Gaston  was  Mayor  of  the 
city.  There  was  a  Board  of  Alder- 
men of  twelve  members  elected  at 
large  and  a  Common  Council  of  sixty- 
four  members  elected  four  from  each 
ward.  The  two  bodies  together  were 
referred  to  as  the  City  Council.  The 
fire  department  was  under  the  charge 
of  a  joint  committee  of  the  aldermen 
and  common  council;  the  fire  alarm 
service  was  under  the  charge  of  an- 
other joint  committee  and  the  loca- 
tion of  the  apparatus  houses  was  un- 
der the  control  of  a  third  joint  com- 
mittee. 

The  Chief  Engineer  and  the  Assis- 
tant Engineers  were  elected  annually 
by  the  City  Council.  John  S.  Dam- 
rell  was  the  Chief  Engineer  and  had 
held  that  office  nearly  seven  years 
having  previously  served  as  an  As- 
sistant Engineer.  The  apparatus  of 
the  department  comprised  twenty-one 
steam  fire  engines,  each  with  a  hose 
reel  or  "jumper."  the  steamers  being 
mostly  of  small  capacity  compared 
with  our  present  day  standards;  ten 
independent  "hose  companies":  sev- 
en "hook  and  ladder  carriages";  and 
three  extinguisher  companies.  This 
apparatus  was  manned  by  a  total 
force  of  about  47.5  men  of  whom  about 
90  were  permanent  men,  that  is, 
giving  their  whole  time  to  the  fire 
department  and  comprising  an  en- 
gineer, fireman  and  driver  for  each 
steamer,  a  driver  for  each  hook  and 


ladder,  independent  hose  and  ex- 
tinguisher company,  the  hose  reels 
of  each  steamer  company,  except  in 
a  few  cases,  being  attached  to  and 
hauled  behind  the  steamer. 

The  balance  of  the  force  was  made 
up  of  "call  men",  that  is  men  who  re- 
sponded from  their  homes  and  places 
of  business  upon  an  alarm  of  fire.  Of 
the  twenty-one  steamers,  six  were  lo- 
cated in  the  city  proper,  three  in  East 
Boston,  three  in  South  Boston,  three 
in  Roxbury  and  six  in  Dorchester, 
while  of  the  seven  hook  and  lad- 
der carriages  only  two  were  in  the 
city  proper. 

At  that  time  there  was  not  a  single 
piece  of  fire  apparatus  located  in 
the  burned  district  and,  peculiarly 
enough,  none  has  since  been  located 
actually  within  this  area.  The  pay- 
roll of  the  department  for  the  year 
1872  was  approximately  $224,000.00. 
Today  the  Boston  Fire  Department 
gives  full  time  employment  to  about 
1400  men,  of  whom  1200  are  the  ac- 
tual fighting  force,  and  has  in  service 
50  pumping  engines,  3  fire  boats,  30 
ladder  trucks  and  numerous  auxili- 
ary apparatus.  The  yearly  payroll 
is  now  over  $2,400,000.00 

The  water  service  in  the  down 
town  section  was  comprised  in  a  sin- 
gle system  of  mains  there  being  a 
twenty-four  inch  main  in  Washington 
Street  from  which  a  twelve  inch  main 
led  through  Bedford  Street  and  down 
through  to  what  was  then  Broad 
Street  but  is  now  Atlantic  Avenue. 
This  main  continued  on  to  State 
Street  and  came  up  State  Street  and 
connected  again  with  the  twenty-four 
inch  main.  The  district  lying  inside 
was  laid  with  six  and  eight  inch  pipes 
most  of  which  had  been  down  many 
years. 

The  hydrants  for  fire  purposes 
were  of  an  old  type,  offset  from  the 
mains  on  four  inch  pipes,  and  hav- 


5 


ing  but  one  outlet  so  that  only  one 
steamer  could  be  connected.  In  some 
cases  the  hydrants  were  many  hun- 
dred feet  apart.  There  were  also 
scattered  throughout  the  district 
quite  a  number  of  underground  fire 
reservoirs  supplied  from  the  mains 
four  inch  pipes.  The  main  in  upper 
Summer  Street  was  a  six  inch  main 
and  was  probably  considerably  re- 
duced in  efficiency  by  rust. 

Today  the  district  is  gridironed 
with  mains  ranging  from  the  thirty- 
six  inch  feeders  down  to  twelve  inch- 
es. Throughout  the  larger  part  of  the 
district,  there  are  three  independent 
systems  of  mains,  the  so-called  low 
service  furnishing  the  general  sup- 
ply of  water  for  domestic,  business 
and  fire  purposes;  the  so-called  high 
sejrvice  ordinarily  furnishing  water 
for  automatic  sprinklers,  hyraulic 
elevators  and  like  uses,  but  easily  and 
quickly  available  for  fire  purposes; 
and  the  so-called  high  pressure  fire 
service  of  recent  installation  and  in- 
tended for  and  devoted  entirely  to 
fire  purposes.  This  service  delivers 
water  at  the  hydrant  at  the  necessary 
pressure  for  fire  uses  and  when  avail- 
able makes  the  use  of  portable  pump- 
ing engines  more  or  less  unnecessary. 

As  compared  to  a  single  six  inch 
main  in  1872,  Summer  Street  today 
has  all  three  services,  a  twelve  inch 
low  service  main,  a  twelve  inch  high 
service  main  and  a  sixteen  inch  high 
pressure  fire  service  main.  Hydrants 
are  now  all  of  a  modern  type 
with  three  and  four  outlets  and  to  a 
la/rge  extent  connected  directly  'to 
the  mains. 

As  a  result  of  the  epizootic,  the 
city  for  a  time  previous  to  the  fire 
had  been  practically  "horseless." 
Street  car  and  bus  lines  had  been 
forced  to  suspend  and  teaming 
of  any  sort  had  been  substantially 
at  a  standstill.  This  condition  of  af- 
fairs made  as  much  of  an  impression 


on  the  public  mind  at  the  time  as  a 
complete  cessation  of  vehicle  traffic 
for  a  long  period  would  today,  and  it 
is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  in  tell- 
ing the  story  of  the  Great  Fire  it  has 
many  times  been  made  to  appear 
that  the  lack  of  horses  to  draw  the 
fire  apparatus  was  the  reason  for  the 
fire  getting  its  great  headway.  Di- 
rectly the  lack  of  horses  seems  to 
have  had  little  bearing.  Indirectly 
It  may  have  had  a  considerable  bear- 
ing. 

On  October  26th,  the  Chief  Engineer 
and  his  fifteen  Assistant  Engineers 
(corresponding  to  our  present  Deputy 
and  District  Chiefs)  met  at  City  Hall 
to  consider  means  to  provide  for  the 
safety  of  the  city  from  fire  during  the 
epidemic. 

They  decided  to  enroll  five  hundred 
temporary  additional  members  of  the 
department  during  the  continuance 
of  the  epidemic  and  to  pay  them  one 
dollar  for  each  fire  to  which  they 
properly  responded  and  twenty-five 
cents  an  hour  for  the  time  they  re- 
mained on  duty  at  fires.  This  force 
was  easily  raised,  for  Boston  was 
then  not  much  more  than  a  decade 
beyond  the  hand  tub  days  when  al- 
most everyone  "ran  with  the  ma- 
chine" on  occasion.  Drag  ropes  were 
attached  to  the  various  pieces  of  ap- 
paratus and  the  actual  speed  in  the 
response  to  fires  proved  to  be  not 
much  less  than  with  horses. 

In  itself  the  lack  of  horses  does  not 
appear  to  have  been  the  cause  of  any 
great  delay  on  the  night  of  the  Great 
Fire  for  with  a  few  exceptions  the  ap' 
paratus  was  hauled  by  man  power 
almost  as  fast  as  it  could  have  been 
with  horses.  On  October  26th,  the 
Chief  Engineer  and  his  fifteen  As- 
sistant Engineers  (corresponding  to 
our  present  Deputy  and  District 
Cliiefs)  met  at  City  Hall  to  consider 


6 


THE  BURNED  DISTRICT. 

.1h6  map  below,  prepared  expressly  for'the  Daily  Advertiser,  represents  the  portion  of 
Ihe-city  burned  over  in  tbe  recent  conflagration,  and  its  relation  to  tbe  surroundinfr  terricor\v 


The  shaded  pnrtion  indicates  the  burnt  district.       E— Old  State  House. 


Prominent  buiklinus  which  were  not  /Jestroyed  are 
distinguifebed  by  black.  The  references  are  as 
"oUows: — 

A— Building  in  which  the  fire  began. 

B— Merchants  Exchange  and  Post-Office. 

C— >;ew  Post-office. 

D— (Jld  .South  Church. 


F— Custom-House. 

G— State-Street  Block. 

H— Fort  Hill. 

1— Faneuil  Hall, 

J— Quincy  Market. 

k— B.  H.        R.  R..wharl 

L— Winthrop  square. 


Courtesy  oj  the  Boston  Transcript 

From  The  Boston  Advertiser,  November  11,  1872 


means  to  provide  for  the  safety  of 
the  city  from  fire  during  the  epidemic. 

That  everything  was  not  done  per- 
haps which  could  have  been  done  to 


provide  serviceable  horses  for  the  CTe- 
partment  is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
by  November  9th  the  horse  railroads 
and  bus  lines  had  resumed  operation, 


though  on  reduced  schedules,  express 
and  teaming  companies  were  doing 
business,  and  as  early  as  October  30th 
a  political  parade  had  been  held,  in 
which  over  one  hundred  horses  had 
been  used.  In  spite  of  this  improved 
condition  only  five  of  the  city's  steam- 
ers were  drawn  by  horses  on  the 
night  of  the  fire. 

At  the  same  meeting  on  October 
26th,  the  Engineers  also  temporarily 
redistricted  the  city  and  rearranged 
the  running  card  of  the  department, 
so  that  during  the  continuance  of  the 
epidemic  the  number  of  steamer  com- 
panies responding  to  alarms  of  fire 
would  be  materially  reduced  and  that 
on  the  first  alarm  only  the  hose  reels 
of  the  steamer  companies  would  be 
taken  to  the  fire. 

The  Engineers  sent  a  request  to 
the  Police  Department  to  have  its 
officers,  upon  the  discovery  of  a  fire, 
investigate  and  find  out  if  possible, 
whether  the  fire  was  above  the  sec- 
ond story  of  the  building,  and  if  it 
was  above  the  second  story  to  ring  a 
second  alarm  without  further  orders. 
The  second  alarm  would  bring  the 
steamers  whose  hose  reels  had  al- 
ready responded  and  some  additional 
steamers,  but  even  then  not  the  num- 
ber which  would  have  responded  to 
the  first  alarm  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances. 

This  seemingly  unnecessary  re- 
districting  or  rearrangement  of 
the  running  card  adopted  by  the 
Engineers  as  a  temporary  expedient 
during  the  epidemic  was  the  cause  of 
from  five  to  ten  minutes  delay  in 
response  of  three  of  the  six  down- 
town steamers  at  the  Great  Fire.  The 
manner  in  which  it  actually  worked 
out  will  appear  later. 

The  fire  originated  in  the  building 
at  the  south-easterly  corner  of  Sum- 
mer and  Kingston  Streets  on  the  site 
of  the  building  now  occupied  by  a  Lig' 


gett  Drug  Store.  The  building  had 
a  fifty  foot  frontage  on  Summer  Street 
and  extended  back  along  Kingston 
Street  one  hundred  feet  to  a  passage- 
way or  alley  fifteen  feet  wide  on  the 
other  side  of  which  was  a  five  story 
brick  building  fronting  on  Kingston 
Street. 

The  passage  way  still  exists  and 
the  present  building  is  similar  in 
height  and  area  to  the  structure 
destroyed.  The  building  was  con- 
structed of  granite  and  had  an  ele- 
vator in  the  rear  corner  furthest 
from  Kingston  Street,  the  shaft 
being  about  five  and  one-half  feet 
square,  sheathed  with  wood  and 
opening  by  a  door  and  windows  onto 
the  passageway. 

The  building  was  comparatively 
new,  having  been  built  in  1866,  and 
represented  the  best  type  of  con- 
struction of  that  time.  The  lower 
floor  was  occupied  by  the  dry  goods 
firm  of  Tebbetts,  Baldwin  &  Davis; 
the  second  floor  by  Damon  Temple 
&  Co.  dealers  in  men's  furnishing 
goods,  and  the  third  and  fourth  floors 
and  a  part  of  the  top  floor  by  A.  K. 
Young  &  Co.,  manufacturers  of  hoop 
skirts  and  bustles  and  dealers  in  cor- 
sets. 

How  OP  when  the  fire  started  has 
never  been  determined.  Presumably, 
from  the  evidence  of  various  persons 
who  saw  it  in  its  early  stages,  it 
started  in  the  basement  and  went  up 
the  elevator  shaft  and  mushroomed 
out  through  the  various  stories,  prob- 
ably into  the  fourth  and  fifth  stories 
first  and  then  into  the  lower  stories. 

Summer  Street  in  the  early  evening 
was  not  the  busy  thoroughfare  it  is 
today  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  the 
fire  was  seen  by  many  persons  long 
before  an  alarm  was  given.  Two  po- 
lice officers  of  the  City  of  Charles- 
town  standing  on  the  Prison  Point 
Bridge  saw  flames  as  early  as  7:10 


8 


p.  M.  and  remarked  that  there  was  a 
fire  in  Boston.  Several  police  officers 
and  private  watchmen  were  within 
a  few  hundred  yards  of  the  scene 
but  not  one  happened  to  pass  the 
building  before  the  alarm  was  given. 

A  number  of  the  residents  of  King- 
ston Street  heard  the  crackling  of 
flames  and  saw  the  fire,  some  even  as 
it  started  up  the  elevator  shaft.  As 
has  happened  many  times  before  and 
since  each  one  apparently  thought 
that  some  one  else  had  attended  to 
the  necessary  duty  of  giving  the 
alarm.  Assistant  Engineer  Regan  at 
his  home  on  Columbia  Street,  heard 
cries  of  fire  and  it  appears  that  he 
must  have  been  at  the  fire  as  early 
as  7:15. 

It  seems  that  he  must  have  assumed 
or  have  been  told  by  bystanders  that 
an  alarm  had  been  given.  Automatic 
fire  alarms  were  unknown.  Some 
human  agency  must  give  the  alarm. 
The  Fire  Department  perhaps  at  that 
time  more  than  at  any  other  period 
in  its  history  was  waiting  and  watch- 
ing for  a  fire,  for  without  doubt  the 
great  majority  of  the  five  hundred 
additional  men  had  finished  their  sup- 
pers and  were  not  averse  to  the  extra 
dollar  which  api  alarm  of  fire  would 
give  some  of  them  a  chance  to  earn. 

It  was  not,  however,  until  police 
officer  Page,  coming  through  Lincoln 
Street  to  Summer  Street,  saw  the 
glare  of  the  flames  over  the  Bedford 
Street  buildings  as  he  reached  the 
corner  and  gave  the  alarm  from  Box 
52  at  7:24  P.  M.  Althoiigh  he  had 
not  actually  seen  the  fire,  there  seems 
to  have  been  no  doubt  in  his  mind 
that  it  was  above  the  second  floor  for 
he  sounded  the  second  alarm  immed- 
iately after,  or  as  it  is  officially  re- 
corded, at  7:29  P.  M.    Steamer  7  on 


East  Street  and  Hose  2  on  Hudson 
Street  had  been  notified  of  the  fire 
by  citizens  and  these  companies  were 
leaving  their  quarters  as  the  bells  be- 
gan to  strike  the  first  alarm.  Steamer 
7's  notification  was  that  there  was  a 
fire  on  Bedford  Street"  and  perhaps 
in  the  location  of  the  fire  thus  given 
by  the  citizen  who  ran  to  East  Street, 
and  probably  passed  fire  alarm  box  52 
on  the  way,  fate  may  have  played  a 
part,  for  Steamer  7  went  to  Bedford 
Street,  took  a  hydrant  and  ran  a  line 
of  hose  through  the  yards  and  over 
the  sheds  of  Bedford  Street  to  the 
rear  of  the  burning  building. 

Hose  2  naturally  came  through 
Kingston  Street  and  ran  a  line  of 
hose  from  a  hydrant  at  the  corner  of 
Kingston  and  Bedford  Streets  into 
the  passageway  at  the  rear  and  at 
first  played  into  the  basement  of  the 
burning  building.  Hose  2  appears  to 
have  had  the  distinction  of  getting 
"first  water"  on  the  fire.  At  this 
time  the  bulk  of  the  fire  must  have 
seemed  to  be  in  the  rear  of  the  build- 
ing and  the  danger  of  a  spread  of 
the  flames  have  appeared  to  be  the 
brick  building  on  the  other  side  of 
the  passageway. 

Fireman  Cheswell  of  Steamer  4, 
destined  later  to  become  Chief  of 
Department,  heard  the  alarm  while 
at  his  supper  table  and  came  from 
Harrison  Avenue  through  Kingston 
Street.  He,  too,  apparently  thought 
the  fight  was  to  come  in  the  passage- 
way to  prevent  the  spread  of  the  fire 
to  the  building  at  the  rear  for  he  saw 
a  hydrant  on  Kingston  Street  oppo- 
site the  burning  building  and  ran 
through  Otis  Street  to  meet  Steamer 
4's  hose  reel  and  guide  it  to  that  hy- 
drant, from  where  a  line  of  hose  was 
taken  to  one  of  the  upper  floors  of 
the  brick  building. 


9 


In  this  way,  it  happened  that  the 
first  three  pieces  of  apparatus  to  ar- 
rive concentrated  their  lines  in  the 
rear  at  the  end  of  the  building  away 
from  Summer  Street.  As  it  turned 
out,  it  was  to  be  some  minutes  more 
before  effective  apparatus  was  to  ar- 
rive on  the  Summer  Street  side.  That 
Engineer  Regan  early  appreciated  the 
seriousness  of  the  situation  is  evi- 
denced by  his  order  to  a  police  offi- 
cer soon  after  the  first  alarm  "to  have 
three  more  alarms  rung,"  which,  had 
it  been  literally  carried  out,  would 
have  resulted  at  once  in  a  "general 
alarm"  calling  out  practically  all  the 
apparatus  in  the  city. 

There  seems  to  be  little  doubt, 
though  he  knew  that  Chief  Engineer 
Damrell  or  Assistant  Engineer  Green, 
also  his  superior,  would  not  be  long 
in  arriving  on  the  scene,  that  En- 
gineer Regan  intended  to  take  the  re- 
sponsibility of  ordering  a  general 
alarm.  As  a  matter  of  ^act,  the 
police  officer  apparently  understood 
that  a  third  alarm  was  wanted  and  as 
a  result  the  third  alarm  was  sounded 
at  7:34  P.  M. 

It  seems  that  fate  decreed  delay 
after  delay  in  the  chain  of  circum- 
stances that  night,  commencing  with 
the  tremendous  delay  in  giving  the 
alarm  followed  in  some  cases  by  a 
slightly  slower  movement  of  some  of 
the  apparatus,  owing  to  lack  of 
horses,  and  followed  by  an  abnormal 
delay  in  starting  for  the  fire  by  some 
of  the  steamers,  which,  under  or- 
dinary conditions,  would  have  re- 
sponded on  the  first  alarm. 

To  make  this  clear,  it  should  be  un- 
derstood that  normally  Steamers  3, 
4,  6,  7,  8  and  10  went  to  Box  52  on 
the  first  alarm.  As  it  worked  out  that 
night,  under  the  temporary  rearrange- 
ment of  the  running  card,  Steamer 
7's  hose  reel  and  Hose  2  reached  the 
fire  as  soon  as  they  woliM'Iiave'iinder 


any  circumstances  and  Steamer  7  it- 
self started  as  the  first  alarm  was 
ringing.  As  far  as  these  companies 
were  concerned,  the  redistricting 
caused  no  delay.  Steamer  4's  hose 
reel  started  on  the  first  alarm  but 
the  steamer  did  not  start  until  the 
second  alarm  was  beginning  to  strike. 

Steamer  3  from  Washington  Street 
above  Dover  Street  and  Steamer 
10  from  River  Street  saw  the 
light  of  the  fire  and  disregarding 
the  running  card,  started  right  after 
the  first  alarm.  Steamer  3  made  ful- 
ly as  good  time  as  with  horses  while 
Steamer  10  was  delayed  perhaps 
a  couple  of  minutes  from  the  lack 
of  horses.  Steamer  8  started  on  the 
second  alarm  and  Steamer  6  start- 
ed on  the  third  alarm.  In  this 
way,  it  was  twenty  minutes  after  the 
first  alarm  before  all  of  these  six 
steamers  were  at  the  fire.  Under  or- 
dinary conditions,  the  last  one  should 
have  been  at  the  fire  about  as  the 
third  alarm  was  ringing. 

Whether  the  fire  could  have  been 
checked  before  getting  well  across 
Summer  Street,  had  all  these  steam- 
ers come  on  the  first  alarm,  is  en- 
tirely guess  work,  but  there  must 
have  been  a  time,  about  when  Chief 
Damrell  arrived,  when  two  or  three 
steamer  streams,  had  they  been  im- 
mediately available  on  Summer 
Street,  might  perhaps  have  changed 
the  course  of  events. 

Chief  Damrell  came  on  foot  from 
his  home  on  Temple  Street  as  soon 
as  the  first  alarm  struck,  passing  the 
corner  of  Beacon  and  Park  Streets 
as  the  second  alarm  was  sounding 
and  probably  reached  the  fire  about 
as  the  third  alarm  was  ringing.  He 
described  the  fire  as  he  first  saw  it 
in  these  words. 

"I  say  this,  and  wish  to  be  dis- 
tinctly understood,  /that  in  my  ex- 
perience in  the  Boston  Fire  I^'epart- 

1 


ment,  covering  twenty-five  years,  I 
never  saw  such  a  sight  as  was  pre- 
sented that  night;  within  eight  min- 
utes from  the  time  the  alarm  sound- 
ed, I  was  on  the  ground,  and  the 
building  was  literally  consumed.  I 
don't  understand  it  today.  It  is  a 
phenomenon  which  I  cannot  possibly 
fathom.  With  all  the  fires  we  have 
had  in  that  district  and  other  sec- 
tions of  the  city,  for  the  past  twenty- 
five  years  that  I  have  been  connected 
with  the  Fire  Department,  I  never  saw 
the  time,  no  matter  how  inflammable 
the  building  was,  whether  it  con- 
tained oils  or  any  other  inflamma- 
ble material,  but  what  we  could  en- 
ter the  building  itself;  but  here  was 
a  case  where  you  could  not  get  near 
the  building.  On  each  side  it  was 
all  on  fire,  through  the  Mansard  roof, 
within  eight  minutes  of  the  time  that 
the  alarm  was  given, — a  sight  I  nev- 
er beheld  before  in  this  city  or  in 
any  other  where  I  have  happened  to 
be  when  there  have  been  large  fires." 

The  Chief  first  went  to  the  passage- 
way on  Kingston  Street  and  found 
the  three  lines  of  Steamers  4  and  7 
and  Hose  2  at  work.  He  then  went 
back  to  Summer  Street  and  found 
that  the  copings  and  roofs  of  the 
buildings  opposite  were  smoking  and 
commencing  to  burst  into  flame  and 
that  the  Summer  and  Kingston  street 
walls  of  the  building  where  the  fire 
started  were  beginning  to  crumble 
from  the  top.  The  fire  had  appa^en^ 
ly  travelled  through  the  upper  stories 
from  the  rear  of  the  building  to  Sum- 
mer Street  with  lightning  rapidity. 

A  line  of  hose  from  Hose  8  had 
been  taken  up  the  stairway  in  the 
front  of  the  building  and  had  gotten 
as  far  as  the  second  floor.  This  was 
ordered  out  and  the  men  who  had 
made  the  venture  had  difficulty  in 
escaping  through  the  shower  of  gran- 
ite blocks  and  debris. 


Steamer  10  had  arrived  by  this 
time  and  had  taken  a  hydrant  at  the 
corner  of  Summer  and  Arch  Streets 
but  Steamers  6  and  8,  with  the  punch 
that  perhaps  even  then  would  have 
checked  the  northward  progress  of 
the  fire,  were  still  on  the  way.  Chief 
Damrell  apparently  realized  that  the 
situation  was  the  most  critical  that 
had  ever  confronted  him  for  he  or- 
dered the  "general  alarm"  which 
started  all  the  rest  of  the  apparatus 
in  the  city  on  its  way  to  the  fire. 
The  time  was  7:45  P.  M. 

Messengers  had  been  sent  to  meet 
Steamers  6  and  8  and  to  direct  them 
to  their  positions.  Steamer  6  to  the 
corner  of  Summer  and  Devonshire 
Streets  and  Steamer  8  to  Winthrop 
Square.  Every  possible  effort  was 
to  be  made  to  confine  the  fire  on  the 
north  side  of  Summer  Street  to  the 
block  bounded  by  Otis  Street,  Win- 
throp Square  and  Devonshire  Street. 
Within  a  few  minutes  after  the  gen- 
era!  alarm,  Chief  Damrell  called  on 
Cambridge  and  Charlestown  for  help. 
Even  at  this  time  ^e  seems  to  have 
felt  that  he  had  a  fair  chance  to  stop 
the  fire,  but  he  had  hardly  completed 
his  dispositions  for  massing  the 
steamers  when  a  shortage  of  water 
began  to  develop. 

As  outlined  above  the  water  mains 
were  small  and  the  hydrants  were 
far  apart  and  of  a  type  to  which  only 
one  steamer  could  be  attached.  When 
Summer  Street  was  a  district  of 
residences,  a  six  inch  main  and 
these  old  fashioned  hydrants  had 
been  ample,  but  now  in  their  ef- 
forts to  get  water  from  this  main, 
the  steamers  were  literally  robbing 
each  other.  Steamers  stopped  pump- 
ing that  others,  at  points  seemingly 
for  the  moment  more  critical,  might 
have  water.  Even  the  underground 
fire  reservoirs,  fed  from  the  mains 
as   they  v/ere   by  four  inch  pipes. 


12 


could  not  meet  the  demand  of  the 
steamers. 

The  fire  began  to  spread  out  and 
cross  Devonshire  and  Otis  Streets  to 
the  east  and  to  the  west,  at  the  same 
time  continuing  its  uninterrupted 
march  northward  and  it  was  not  long 
before  it  had  reached  such  propor- 
tions that,  even  had  there  been  water 
in  plenty,  there  was  not  enough  ap- 
paratus immediately  available  to  cope 
with  it.  Not  long  after  8  o'clock 
Chief  Damrell  sent  out  wide  spread 
calls  for  help  so  that  as  the  night 
wore  along,  steamers,  hose  and  men 
began  to  pour  in,  eventually  from 
points  as  far  away  as  New  Haven, 
Conn.,  and  Portland,  Maine. 

By  late  afternoon  on  Sunday,  42 
steamers,  4  hand  engines,  53  hose 
companies,  3  ladder  trucks,  about 
1700  men  and  40,000  feet  of  hose  had 
arrived  in  the  city. 

The  fire  does  not  seem  to  have 
travelled  as  a  solid  wall  of  flame  but 
went  from  building  to  building  by 
catching  here  and  there  on  the  roofs 
and  around  the  copings  and  windows 
and  in  some  Instances  by  the  buriv 
ing  out  of  the  timbers  set  in  the 
comparatively  thin  brick  walls. 

Chief  Damrell  as  one  means  of  at 
least  partially  checking  its  spread 
sent  a  request  to  the  police  depart- 
ment to  organize  fifty  officers  to 
break  into  stores  and  secure  carpets 
and  blankets  and  to  use  these  in  a 
wet  condition  to  protect  the  roofs, 
copings  and  windows  from  the  flame- 
generating  heat.  The  police  depart- 
ment, apparently  because  its  forces 
were  scattered  and  necessary  to  han- 
dle the  great  throngs  which  had  col- 
lected, does  not  seem  to  have  made 
any  attempt  to  comply  with  this  re- 
quest. 

That  Chief  Damrell's  idea  was  a 
good  one,  however,  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  Hovey's  building  was  saved 


by  members  of  the  firm  and  employ- 
ees who  used  these  tactics.  The  story 
of  the  saving  of  Hovey's  building  is 
too  long  to  detail  here,  but  as  told 
by  Mr.  George  Gardner  it  is  well 
worth  reading  as  an  example  of  cour- 
age and  faithfulness,  and  as  showing 
how  a  very  little  water  properly  ap- 
plied can  be  made  to  have  a  great 
effect. 

The  iron  railing  which  can  be  seen 
along  the  front  of  the  roof  of  Hovey's 
building  today,  and  which  was  origi- 
nally placed  there  for  protection  when 
clearing  the  roof  of  snow,  played  a 
part  that  night  in  helping  to  keep  the 
fire  from  the  building.  Buildings  on 
the  west  side  of  Washington  Street 
were  also  protected  by  the  owners 
and  tenants  in  much  the  same  man- 
ner as  Hovey's,  so  that  the  fire  did 
not  cross  Washington  Street.  It 
seems  possible  to  believe  that  if  the 
Chief  could  have  effected  the  organi- 
zation of  citizens  into  "blanket"  bri- 
gades they  might  perhaps  have  been 
effective  in  stopping  the  fire  at  other 
points. 

As  it  became  apparent  that  the 
fire  was  beyond  all  hope  of  control 
by  the  f\r^  department,  citizens  be- 
gan to  urge  on  the  Mayor  the  necessi- 
ty of  the  use  of  gunpowder.  Chief 
Damrell  and  his  Engineers  were  al- 
most uniformly  opposed  on  general 
principles  to  the  use  of  gunpowder, 
but  after  consultation  yielded  to  the 
demand  and  written  authority  was 
given  by  Chief  Damrell  to  various 
citizens  to  "remove  goods  or  blow  up 
buildings"  as  their  judgment  might 
direct.  A  number  of  buildings  were 
blown  up  or  partly  demolished,  but 
the  lack  of  suitable  means  for  confin- 
ing the  powder  generally  made  the 
destruction  very  incomplete.  The 
late  Major  Henry  L.  Higginson,  then 
a  comparatively  young  man,  realized 
the  enormity  of  the  situation  and  that 


13 


heroic  measures  should  be  taken  and 
urged  on  the  Mayor  that  a  path 
where  a  stand  could  be  made  should 
be  created  by  blowing  up  buildings  in 
a  line  from  Washington  Street  to  the 
harbor  and  far  ahead  of  the  fire. 

The  work  was  not  done,  however, 
in  such  a  systematic  manner  nor  by 
a  prearranged  plan,  but  was  done  by 
piecemeal  here  and  there,  the  actual 
explosion  being  made  in  almost  every 
case  after  the  building  mined  had 
caught  fire,  so  that  in  its  final  results 
gun  powder  played  no  large  part  in 
stopping  the  fire. 

Generally  speaking,  once  the  fire 
had  gotten  well  across  Summer  Street 
and  into  Winthrop  Square,  there  ap- 
pears to  have  been  no  definite  con- 
certed plan  to  stop  it.  Lack  of  water 
prevented  an  effectual  massing  of 
steamers  at  Franklin  Street  where 
the  width  of  that  street  furnished 
the  best  opportunity.  The  movement 
of  the  fire  was  in  most  respects  one 
of  steady  progress  although  early  in 
the  evening  it  made  one  big  jump 
when  the  Hartford  and  Erie  Railroad 
Station  at  the  foot  of  Summer  Street 
and  the  wharves  adjoining  it  caught 
fire  from  flying  brands. 

The  story  of  the  travel  of  the  fire 
from  building  to  building  and  from 
street  to  street  is  too  long  to  detail 
here  and  would  be  but  a  repetition. 
Suffice  to  say  that  it  was  after  noon 
on  Sunday  when  its  continued  ad- 
vance had  been  checked,  with  Hovey's 
Building  standing  near  the  southwest 
corner  overlooking  a  desolate  sixty- 
five  acres  of  smoking  ruins.  Included 
in  the  buildings  dfstroyed  were 
seventy  dwelling  or  lodging  houses,' 
twenty-eight  of  which  were  located, 
strange  as  it  may  appear  to  the 
younger  business  man  of  today,  on 
Purchase  Street. 

An  accurate  idea  of  the  area  burned 
over  can  be  gained  from  the  map 
on   page   7,   notice   being   taken  of 


the  fact  that  although  the  fire  trav- 
elled the  entire  length  of  the  south- 
erly side  of  Summer  Street  its  ad- 
vance to  the  south  was  comparatively 
small  and  that  on  Kingston  Street 
it  was  stopped  after  it  had  destroyed 
the  building  in  rear  of  the  building 
where  it  started. 

The  wind  blowing  at  from  five  to 
ten  miles  an  hour  held  from  the 
north  and  northwest  or  in  the  gen- 
eral direction  of  South  Boston, 
throughout  the  fire  so  that  the  fire 
presents  the  phenomenon  of  having 
burned  against  or  across  the  wind 
over  most  of  the  territory  con- 
sumed. The  United  States  Signal 
Service  officers  in  their  report  to 
the  Chief  of  the  Signal  Service  oi 
the  Army  contrast  this  with  the 
Chicago  fire  of  the  year  previous 
where,  with  a  strong  wind  blowing, 
the  fire  burned  to  leeward. 

The  total  loss  was  estimated  by 
Thomas  Hills,  then  Chairman  of  the 
Board  of  Assessors,  as  about  $75,000,- 
000.  As  an  example  of  increased 
land  values,  it  appears  that  within 
a  short  time  after  the  fire,  land  on 
Summer  Street  opposite  Church 
Green,  then  assessed  for  $11.00,  sold 
for  $17.00  a  square  foot.  Today  land 
in  that  location  is  assessed  for  about 
$45.00  a  foot. 

So  far  as  building  and  street  con- 
ditions before  the  fire  were  con- 
cerned, it  is  known  that  the  English 
Underwriters  after  the  Chicago  Fire 
of  the  year  previous  had  caused  a 
survey  to  be  made  of  the  large  Am- 
erican cities  and  had  found  condi- 
tions in  the  business  section  of  Bos- 
ton such  that  at  the  time  of  the  fire 
they  were  seriously  considering  the 
cancellation  of  their  risks. 

That  Boston  was  not  discouraged 
by  the  disaster  is  evidenced  by  a 
walk  through  the  district  today  and 
an  observance  here  and  there  of  the 


Courtesy  of  Bostonian  Society 

capstones  of  brick  and  granite  build 
ings  bearing  the  figures  1873.  In 
the  rebuilding,  however,  no  sub- 
stantial progress  was  made  toward 
fire  prevention,  except  as  widened 
streets  furnish  better  opportunities 
to  stop  a  fire.  As  previously  men- 
tioned, all  the  principal  streets  were 
widened  and  straightened  and  Post 
Office  Square  created.  Franklin 
Street  which  had  extended  only  to 
Federal  Street  was  cut  through  to 
Pearl  Street,  there  to  meet  what  had 
been  Sturgis  Street.  A  noticeable 
effect  of  the  widening  is  seen  today 
on  the  easterly  side  of  Washington 
Street,  between  Summer  and  Milk 
Streets,  where  a  distinct  set-back 
from  the  general  building  line  of 
Washington  Street  is  apparent  and 
on  the  Summer  Street  end  of  Chaun- 
cy  Street  where  the  fire  line  is  dis- 
tinctly marked. 

The  rew  buildings  so  far  as  fire 
resistance  is  concerned  were  in  their 
individual  characteristics  somewhat 
more  fire-retarding  but  in  their  en- 
tirety they  presented  little  advance 
In  the  art  of  fire  resistance,  and  it 
was  not  until  structural  steel  and  con- 
crete came  into  general  use  that  we 


Panoramic  View  of  the  B 

began  to  approach  a  fire  resisting 
construction. 

Since  then  the  northerly  end  of  the 
burned  district  has  been  fairly  well 
for  the  second  time  rebuilt  and  this 
time  with  fire  resisting  structures 
with  an  uncomfortable  sprinkling  of 
the  old  type  still  scattered  between 
the  newer  buildings.  To  the  east 
in  the  section  bounded  by  Otis  and 
Devonshire  Street  on  the  west, 
Franklin  Street  on  the  north  and 
Atlantic  Avenue  and  Summer  Street 
on  the  east  and  south,  there  is  prac- 
tically no  modern  fire  resisting  con- 
struction. Of  the  area  of  down-town 
Boston  not  burned  over  in  the  Great 
Kire,  the  entire  section  to  the  north 
of  State  and  Court  Streets  today  pre- 
sents hardly  an  example  of  modern 
fire  resisting  construction.  To  the 
south  and  west  of  the  burned  area, 
we  find  more  modern  buildings, 
though  comparatively  widely  scat- 
tered, among  the  old  ones. 

Since  1872  the  building  code  and 
the  requirements  of  the  Underwriters 
have  brought  into  use  many  devices 
like  automatic  sprinklers  and  water 
curtains,  automatic  doors,  wire  glass 
and  automatic  fire  alarms  to  prevent 


16 


-Old  South  Church  on  extreme  left. 


and  retard  the  rapid  spread  of  fire. 
The  personnel  of  the  fire  department 
is  now  a  highly  trained  force, 
equipped  with  what  appears  to  be  a 
fairly  ample  supply  of  the  best  fire 
fighting  machinery  available.  In 
short,  both  in  men  and  apparatus, 
the  Boston  Fire  Department  is  second 
to  none.  Of  late  years,  it  has  been 
highly  successful  in  handling  down 
town  fires,  so  that  a  fire  which  burns 
out  one  of  these  old  buildings  is  a 
rarity. 

As  compared  to  Chief  Damrell's 
situation  fifty  years  ago  when  it  took 
him  nearly  two  hours  to  get  his 
twenty-one  steamers  to  work,  the 
present  Chief  with  normal  conditions 
could  mass  almost  fifty  pumping  en- 
gines on  Boston  Common  in  less  than 
half  an  hour,  could  summon  almost 
as  many  more  from  other  cities  and 
towns  within  an  hour,  has  ample 
mains  and  hydrants  with  which  to 
supply  those  engines,  has  also 
throughout  the  central  part  of  the 
city  the  new  high  pressure  fire  serv- 
ice capable  of  supplying  under  prop- 
er pressure  for  fire  service  10,000 
gallons  of  water  a  minute  and  eventu- 
ally to  be  capable  of  supplying  20,000 


gallons  a  minute,  has  deck  guns  and 
water  towers  which  control  and  di- 
rect streams  which  men  unaided  by 
these  devices  could  not  control  or 
direct.  Yet  when  asked  whether 
a  repetition  of  the  Great  Fire  could 
occur  today  he  laconically  replied 
"Nothing  is  impossible." 

In  this  reply  he  was  probably 
guided  by  the  fact  that  most  great 
fires  are  the  result  of  an  unforseen 
combination  of  circumstances  and  a 
sometimes  almost  unbelievable  chain 
of  events.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
however,  it  does  not  seem  probable 
that  a  fire  covering  such  an  area 
could  occur  again  unless  it  be  to  the 
north  of  State  Street.  The  loss  in 
1872  over  an  area  of  sixty-five  acres 
was  not  over  seventy-five  million  dol- 
lars. It  is  not  difficult  to  pick  out 
some  very  much  smaller  areas  to- 
day where  the  loss  of  a  total  destruc- 
tion would  exceed  the  entire  loss  in 
1872. 

But  the  Chief  is  right  when  he 
says  that  nothing  is  impossible  for 
within  the  year  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  R.  R. 
building  in  Chicago,  an  office  build- 
ing of  approved  fire  resisting  con- 
struction, fifteen    stories    high  and 


17 


protected  on  its  exposed  side  by  an 
eighty  foot  street  was  subjected  to 
the  heat  generated  by  the  burning 
of  several  low,  old-fashioned  build- 
ings and  was  practically  gutted  of 
the  contents  of  its  upper  stories  in- 
cluding plans  and  records  of  the 
railroad  which  had  cost  over  five 
million  dollars  to  make  and  as- 
semble. 

With  the  protection  affiorded  by 
the  eighty  foot  street,  it  had  not  been 
thought  necessary  to  use  wire  glass 
or  shutters  to  protect  the  window 
openings.  The  Chicago  Chief  used 
at  this  fire  only  a  portion  of  his  de 
partment  but  that  portion  included 
more  pumping  engines  than  Boston 
today  has  altogether  and  more  than 
were  probably  actively  engaged  in 
our  Great  Fire. 

The  word  ''fireproof"  as  applied  to 
a  building  was  a  distinct  misnomer  in 
1872,  It  is  almost  as  much  of  a  mis- 
nomer today.  The  best  we  can  ex- 
pect of  any  building  is  that  it  will 
still  be  structurally  sound  after 
passing  through  any  heat  that  it  may 
be  subjected  to  from  the  exterior 
and  that  any  fire  starting  in  the  in- 
terior will  be  confined  by  the  build- 
ing itself  to  the  floor  on  which  it 
originated.  In  other  words,  it  is 
a  building  which  from  its  own  sub- 
stance will  not  generate  any  large 


degree  of  heat  and  of  a  substance 
which  can  resist  without  structural 
failure  such  heat  as  it  may  be  sub- 
jected to. 

The  degree  of  heat  generated  by 
a  burning  building  and  its  contents 
is  enormous,  literally  running  into 
the  thousands  of  degrees  fahrenheit. 
Your  cook  will  tell  you  that  the  oven, 
in  your  kitchen  stove  never  goes 
above  a  few  hundred  degrees  and 
yet  you  will  find  that  a  piece  of  pa- 
per put  in  the  oven  will  be  charred 
to  a  crisp.  A  fire  around  one  of  these 
fire  resisting  buildings,  as  happened 
in  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  fire,  puts  the  con- 
tents of  the  fire  resisting  building  in 
about  the  same  situation  as  the  paper 
in  the  oven,  only  with  the  oven  very 
much  hotter. 

Fire  departments  have  made  tre- 
mendous strides,  but  it  is  doubtful 
if  they  can  ever  be  many  strides 
ahead  of  a  conflagration  as  long  as 
the  old  structures  remain  in  large 
groups.  As  far  as  fire-resisting 
buildings  in  Boston  are  concerned, 
many  of  them  have  a  worse  ex- 
posure than  the  Chicago  building 
and  almost  any  one  of  them  is  liable 
to  be  put  in  the  situation  of  Poor 
Dog  Tray  of  nursery  fame  who  was 
whipped  because  he  was  in  bad  com- 
pany. 


The  Fire  Menace 


By  JOHN   O.  TABER 
Chief,  Boston  Fire  Department 


ON  the  night  of  November 
9th,  1872,  it  was  my  for- 
tune to  have  been  play- 
ing in  Kingston  Street,  and 
with    my    boy  companions  to 


have  seen  the  fire  as  it  went  up 
the  elevator  shaft.  We  boys 
ran  to  Hose  2  on  Hudson  Street 
to  tell  them  of  the  fire,  and 
helped  to  drag  the  hose  reel  to 


18 


the  fire.  I  remember  well  of 
seeing  the  connecting  up  of  the 
line  to  the  hydrant  and  of  help- 
ing to  "light  up"  on  the  line  of 
hose  as  the  pipe  or  nozzle  was 
taken  into  the  alley.  Natural- 
ly, as  a  boy  of  eight,  I  little  re- 
alized that  the  day  would  come 
when  I  should  have  the  honor  of 
being  Chief  of  what  I  believe  to 
be  the  finest  fire  department  in 
the  world. 

I  hope  that  neither  I  nor  any 
of  my  successors  will  ever  be 
confronted  with  the  problem 
that  confronted  Chief  Damrell 
on  that  night,  but  I  believe  that 
Mr.  Decrow  is  right  when  he 
says  that  we  are  even  now,  with 
all  our  apparatus  and  all  our 
men  and  all  our  water  supply, 
not  many  strides  ahead  of  a  con- 
flagration. We  have  acre  upon 
acre  of  buildings  just  as  com- 
bustible as  were  the  buildings 
in  1872.  We  are  nowadays 
generally  lucky  enough  to  get 
notice  of  the  fires  early  enough 
and  to  get  the  apparatus  there 
soon  enough  to  stop  fires  before 
they  assume  conflagration  pro- 
portions. 

With  our  motorized  depart- 
ment, horse  diseases  cannot 
affect  us,  but  as  Mr.  Decrow 
points  out,  it  is  the  combination 
of  unusual  circumstances  which 
may  affect  us.  The  great  in- 
crease in  the  number  of  motor 
vehicles  on  our  streets  may 
some  time  cause  us  trouble,  and 
delay  the  apparatus  just  enough 
to  allow  the  fire  to  get  away 
from  us. 

From  our  point  of  view,  the 
congestion  of  the  streets  by  the 
great  number  of  motor  vehicles, 
both  parked  and  moving,  is  get- 


ting to  be  a  very  serious  matter. 
We  also  have  weather  condi- 
tions occasionally  as  we  had  two 
or  three  years  ago,  when  the 
great  fall  of  snow  kept  us  at  our 
wit's  ends  to  be  sure  we  could 
get  apparatus  to  a  fire.  These 
are  two  instances,  either  one  of 
which  combined  with  some  oth- 
er seemingly  more  or  less  un- 
important happenings  might 
make  the  unusual  combination 
of  circumstances  which  would 
let  a  fire  get  too  far  ahead  of  us. 

The  contents  of  our  modern 
buildings  are  just  as  combusti- 
ble as  were  the  contents  of  the 
buildings  in  1872,  and  these  con- 
tents can  easily  be  burned  by  a 
fire  from  the  outside  as  hap- 
pened in  Chicago  and  in  a  num- 
ber of  other  cities.  These  mod- 
ern buildings  do,  however,  make 
good  conflagration  stops  where 
we  could  make  a  stand.  Chief 
Damrell  did  not  have  them  in 
1872. 

If  we  are  ever  again  unlucky 
enough  to  have  a  fire  of  confla- 
gration size,  either  in  the  busi- 
ness or  residential  sections  of 
the  city,  I  cannot  urge  upon  the 
citizens  too  strongly  the  neces- 
sity and  wisdom  of  staying  at 
their  homes  or  places  of  busi- 
ness, as  the  case  may  be,  and  of 
protecting  the  buildings  by 
every  means  possible,  whether 
it  be  wet  blankets,  buckets  of 
water,  a  garden  hose,  sand,  or 
what  not,  from  the  flying 
brands. 

Hovey's  building  is  standing 
today  because  Hovey's  people 
stayed  at  home  and  sawed 
wood  instead  of  star  gazing  and 
depending  on  an  already  over- 
worked    fire     department.  I 


19 


haven't  any  question  either 
that,  had  all  the  people  of  Chel- 
sea stayed  at  home  and  watched 
their  property,  the  loss  would 
have  been  reduced  a  great  deal. 
It  is  human  nature  to  want  to 


watch  a  fire,  but  when  that  fire 
begins  to  spread  it  is  a  pretty 
good  time  to  stop  watching  it 
and  to  help  the  fire  department 
by  watching  your  own  home  or 
place  of  business. 


A  Tragic  Night 


By  DR.  CHARLES  W.  ELIOT 


ON  the  evening  when  the  great 
Boston  fire  of  1872  broke 
out  I  was  sitting  by  the 
bedside  of  a  young  cousin  who 
was  mortally  ill — when  the  fire 
bells  rang.  I  counted  them,  but 
did  not  leave  my  seat;  but  when, 
after  a  short  interval,  they  rang  again, 
I  rose  and  looked  out  of  the  window. 
A  bright  and  extensive  fiery  glow 
lighted  the  sky.  I  bade  my  cousin 
goodnight,  and  left  the  house  at  once. 
It  was  nearly  nine  o'clock  when  I  ran 
across  the  Common  and  down  Winter 
and  Summer  streets,  where  fire  ap- 
paratus was  arriving,  wagons  loaded 
with  goods  were  already  trying  to 
get  northward  or  westward,  empty 
wagons  were  trying  to  move  in  an 
opposite  direction,  and  a  great  crowd 
of  people  filled  the  streets  and  the 
sidewalks. 

On  Winter  street  I  passed  close  by 
a  British  Army  officer  with  whom  I 
had  had  some  pleasant  talk  the  day 
before.  The  light  from  the  fire  was 
so  brilliant  that  we  easily  recognized 
each  other;  and  I  stopped  at  his  side. 
He  spoke  first,  saying,  "Mr.  Presi- 
dent, I  have  been  on  this  street,  and 
nearer  the  fire,  for  fifteen  minutes. 
There  is  apparently  nobody  in  com- 
mand of  your  Fire  Department,  no 


concerted  attack  on  the  fire,  and  no 
guidance  is  given  to  the  arriving  ap- 
paratus.   How  can  this  be?'* 

I  replied  that  I  had  only  just 
reached  the  spot,  and  had  seen 
nothing  for  myself.  When  he  added 
that  the  fire  had  already  acquired  a 
fearful  headway,  and  that  there  was 
no  effective  police  control  of  the 
crowds,  I  could  only  express  my  sur- 
prise and  mortification.  I  pressed 
on  as  far  as  Pearl  street,  where  I 
could  see  the  crowd,  the  flames,  and 
the  futile  efforts  of  a  few  leading- 
hosemen,  who  were  pouring  water  net 
into  the  interior  of  the  burning  stores 
but  on  to  their  granite  fronts. 

I  remained  in  the  streets  nearest 
the  fire  for  an  hour  or  more,  long 
enough  to  see  that  the  fire  was  rapidly 
eating  its  way  northward  toward 
Washington  street  and  eastward  to- 
wards State  street.  In  great  alarm 
for  the  College  property  and  records 
I  struggled  through  Devonshire  and 
Water  streets  to  Washington  street. 
The  office  of  the  Treasurer  of  Harvard 
College  was  at  that  time  over  the 
bookstore  of  Little,  Brown  &  Com- 
pany on  the  southerly  side  of  Wash- 
ington street  half  way  between  State 
and  Water  streets.  The  windows  of 
the  office  looked  right  over  the  burn- 


ing  district.  I  found  that  the  Treas- 
urer, Nathaniel  Silsbee,  had  reached 
the  oflice  just  before  me;  and  we  held 
an  immediate  consultation  as  to  the 
removal  of  the  records  of  the  Presi- 
dent and  Fellows  to  some  safer  place. 

Dr.  Nathaniel  B.  Shurtleff,  Secretary 
of  the  Board  of  Overseers  from  1854- 
1872,  and  a  member  of  that  Board  two 
years  earlier,  lived  at  a  house  on 
Beacon  street  close  to  Tremont 
street;  and  I  knew  that  he  had  cor- 
rected many  valuable  books  and 
records.  I  hastened  thither,  found 
him  on  the  alert,  and  very  anxious 
and  troubled;  but  he  at  once  assented 
to  my  bringing  the  records  of  the 
President  and  Fellows  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege to  his  library,  saying  that  he  was 
hoping  to  make  arrangements  with 
two  friends  who  owned  horses  and 
carriages  for  the  removal  of  all  his 
books  and  papers  to  a  place  of 
safety,  in  case  the  fire  approached 
his  house. 

Thereupon  Treasurer  Silsbee  and  I 
carried  the  original  record-books  and 
most  important  papers  of  the  Presi- 
dent and  Fellows  through  the  turbu- 
lent streets  to  Dr.  S-hurtleff's  house 
by  several  trips,  and  then  returned  to 
the  Treasurer's  office  to  watch  the 
progress  of  the  flames  towards  Wash- 
ington street.  I  made  repeated  ex- 
cursions to  the  immediate  vicinity  of 
the  fire,  and  witnessed  the  destruc- 
tion of  several  valuable  stores  on 
Franklin  and  Washington  streets 
which  belonged  to  the  University. 

In  the  early  morning  I  discovered 
that  a  new  defense  of  the  north  side 
of  Washington  street  had  been  or- 
ganized, that  a  considerable  group  of 
engines,  mostly  new  arrivals  from 
towns  and  cities  about  Boston,  had 
been  p'lanted  in  the  rear  of  the  build- 
ings on  the  north  side  of  the  street, 
and  were  effectively  defending  that 
row  of  buildings  from  Temple  Place 


to  School  street.  Happily  a  com- 
mander had  appeared  in  the  person 
of  an  assistant  chief  of  the  Fire  De- 
partment. He  had  acted  on  his  own 
responsibility  without  orders  from 
any  superior. 

From  the  Treasurer's  office  (the 
building  went  all  the  way  through 
from  Washington  street  to  Devon- 
shire street)  Mr.  Silsbee  and  I 
watched  anxiously  the  progress  of  the 
fire  both  eastward  and  northward. 
The  securities  held  by  Harvard  Col- 
lege were  at  that  time  deposited 
partly  in  the  vaults  of  the  first  Safe 
Deposit  Company  organized  in  Bos- 
ton (chiefly  through  the  labors  of  Col. 
Henry  Lee),  and  partly  in  the  Suffolk 
Bank  Building  at  No.  60  State  street 
opposite  the  heavy  granite  building 
called  the  Merchants  Exchange.  This 
latter  building  had  a  roof  made  of 
stone,  and  was  supposed  to  be  fire- 
proof. 

In  spite  of  the  efforts  of  a  consid- 
erable number  of  volunteer  helpers 
the  flames  got  into  this  building 
through  windows;  and  before  long  the 
roof  fell  in,  some  of  the  volunteers 
who  were  working  on  it  barely  es- 
caping with  their  lives.  Thereupon 
Treasurer  Silsbee  and  I  consulted  a 
third  member  of  the  Corporation,  Mr. 
Francis  B.  Crowninshield,  whose  office 
was  nearby,  about  removing  the  se- 
curities of  the  College  from  the  Suf- 
folk Bank  Building  to  Cambnd^e.  I 
had  earlier  ascertained  through  a 
messenger  that  the  Charles  River 
Bank  in  Harvard  Square  would  re- 
ceive the  securities  of  the  College. 

Mr.  Crowninshield  approving,  we 
packed  all  the  securities  into  an  old- 
fashioned  carpet  bag  made  of  carpet 
and  leather,  which  stood  nearly  three 
feet  high  when  placed  on  its  end, 
and  then  held  a  consultation  on  the 
means  of  getting  that  bag  to  Har- 


21 


vard  Square.  No  private  carriage  or 
other  conveyance  was  procurable. 

We  decided  to  carry  the  bag 
through  the  streets  to  Bowdoin 
Square,  and  there  take  a  horsecar 
to  Harvard  Square.  I  carried  the  bag, 
Mr.  Silsbee  walked  beside  me  on  my 
right,  and  Mr.  Crowninshield  fol- 
lowed with  his  right  hand  holding  a 
pistol  in  the  pocket  of  his  coat.  In 
about  three-quarters  of  an  hour  we 
had  the  satisfaction  of  depositing  that 
bag  in  the  Charles  River  Bank. 

When  we  got  back  to  Boston  we 
found  that  the  fire  had  been  checked 
on  the  north  side  of  Washington 
street,  had  not  crossed  State  street, 
and  had  been  stopped  on  part  of  its 
southerly  front  by  blowing  up,  before 
the  fire  actually  reached  them,  rows 
of  buildings  which  were  obviously  to 
be  the  next  victims  of  the  flames. 


This  measure  was  taken  on  their  own 
responsibility  by  a  few  ex-officers  of 
Massachusetts  troops  in  the  Civil 
War  with  explosives  which  they 
themselves  procured  and  fired.  They 
had  earlier  sought  authority  at  the 
City  Hall  to  use  explosives;  but  the 
Mayor  had  not  been  able  on  the  mo- 
ment to  find  in  the  law  books  at  his 
office  a  safe  precedent  for  authoriz- 
ing such  action.  I  saw  nothing  of 
this  blowing  up  process — only  heard 
about  it  from  friends  a  little  later. 

After  walking  through  several 
streets  where  the  tired  firemen  were 
at  work,  and  finding  that  a  good 
number  of  volunteers  were  giving 
them  food  and  coffee,  I  again  crossed 
the  Common  to  my  mother's  house  on 
Charles  street,  got  some  food,  and 
took  a  nap. 


The  Business  Lessons  of 
the  Fire 

By  FRED  I.  BROWN 

Brown-Howland  Company 


IN  the  picture  on  the  opposite  page 
of  the  ruins  of  the  building  where 
the  Great  Fire  started  is  a  wood- 
en sign  stuck  in  the  lamp  post  which 
reads  "A.  K.  Young  &  Co."  It  tells 
us  that  Mr.  Young's  firm  started  bus- 
iness again. 

From  Mr.  Young's  own  testimony, 
we  know  that  up  to  the  time  of  the 
fire  the  profits  for  the  year  had  been 
over  $30,000.00;  that  the  insurance 
on,  his  stock  was  far  below  his  losses; 


that  he  had  recently  declined  to  re- 
new one  policy  on  its  expiration;  and 
that  his  accounts  receivable  were 
something  over  fifty  thousand  dollars, 
of  which  all  evidence  was  gone,  for 
his  safe,  had  not  protected  his  books. 
He  frankly  admitted  that  every  time 
he  put  his  books  away  he  knew  he 
was  taking  a  chance  with  an  "unsafe" 
safe  whose  door  would  not  lock. 

When  Mr.  Young  opened  up  his 
new  office,  he  started  with  'an  ab^b- 


22 


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•  TO 


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y  o- 


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lutely  clear  desk,  witliout  a  new  or- 
der or  the  record  of  an  old,  and  with 
his  books  of  account  destroyed, 

Mr.  Young's  case  is  typical  of  doz- 
ens of  others,  whose  testimony  at 
the  hearings  following  the  fire  was 
almost  unanimous  that  their  para- 
mount thought  as  they  watched  the 
flames  wipe  out  their  business  or 
raced  with  them  to  locations  that  were 
threatened,  was  the  saving  of  their 
"books  of  accounts  and  records,"  — 
few  of  them  adequately  protected. 

Fifty  years  have  seen  almost  im- 
measurable improvement  in  the  sci- 
ence of  fire-fighting  and  its  tools;  have 
seen  the  fire  department  raised  to  a 
profession,  and  multiplied  by  hun- 
dreds in  men  and  apparatus;  have 
seen  insurance  recognized  as  an  in- 
dispensable service,  as  sound  a  part 
of  any  business  as  integrity  for  on 
it  depends  the  protection  of  creditors 
and  stockholders;  have  seen  the  de- 
velopment of  the  fire-resisting  build- 
ing, that  like  the  Postoffice  fifty  years 
ago,  will  always  do  their  part  in  hold- 
ing back  the  spread  of  fire;  have  seen 
the  growth  of  building  and  fire  laws 
that  mean  even  better  conditions  as 
time  goes  on,  and  recently  have  seen 
signs  of  a  sentiment  of  fire-prevention 
that  means  not  only  safety  first,  but 
the  consideration  of  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself. 

But  these  fifty  years  have  also  seen 
the  narrow  streets  of  Boston,  in  spite 
of  the  widening  after  the  fire,  grow 
more  congested  and  difficult  with  the 
relative  narrowing  by  the  larger 
buildings  and  the  increase  of  traffic 
beyond  their  capacity;  have  seen 
property  values  so  concentrated  that 
the  destruction  of  one  block  today 
would  in  many  cases  exceed  the  fire 
loss  of  the  whole  sixty-five  acres  of 
the  big  fire;  have  seen  the  taming 
of  that  great  servant,  electricity,  so 
invaluable  in  every  way,  but  to  whose 


door  is  laid  an  amazing  percentage  of 
the  fires  of  the  country;  and  they 
ha^e  seen  through  the  development 
of  communication  the  marvelous  con- 
solidations of  big  business  with  their 
dependence  upon  records  for  any  kind 
of  successful  administration.  It  is 
the  mass  and  value  of  these  records, 
peculiarly  susceptible  to  fire  and 
water,  that  mark  the  difference  of 
business  then  and  now. 

In  today's  fires  the  loss  of  building, 
equipment,  tools  and  commodities 
may  be  large, — the  loss  of  time  and 
difficulties  of  operating  in  temporary 
quarters  may  be  equally  large, — but 
the  greatest  of  all  losses  is  the  handi- 
caps resulting  from  the  destruction 
of  business  records.  The  researches 
and  experiments  of  the  past, — agree- 
ments made, — worked-out  plans  in 
operation, — responsibilitjies  incurred, 
— obligations  owed, — obligations  due, 
— records,  too  important  to  trust  to 
memory,  these  are  the  big  things  in 
any  business. 

In  fact,  insurance  will  cover  de- 
stroyed commodities,  buildings  and 
equipment,  will  also  cover  lost  time 
and  lost  profits,  and,  in  some  cases 
the  new  buildings,  the  up-to-date 
equipment  and  the  latest  seasonable 
merchandise,  paid  for  by  insurance 
reparation,  become  a  potential  gain 
rather  than  a  loss.  But  vital  records 
are  practically  uninsurable  as  well  as 
unreplacable. 

It  may  take  another  fifty  years,  or 
possibly  another  "Boston  Fire"  to  re- 
build the  old  districts  of  the  city,  and 
bring  our  better  districts  up  to  some 
uniformity  in  fire  resistance. 

Even  then,  the  Fire  Chief's  "Noth- 
ing  is  impossible"  would  apply  to  con- 
flagration possibilities  in  Boston. 

One  of  the  messages  of  the  "Bos- 
ton Fire"  is  that,  in  spite  of  favorable 
wind  conditions,  it  got  away  from 
control  because  of  a  slight  delay  in 


Courtesy  of  Brown-Howland  Company 

The  alley  off  Kingston  street  where  the  fire  started,  as  it  appears  today.  The 
fire  probably  had  its  inception  in  the  basement  against  the  wall  of 
which  the  (ire  shutter  may  be  seen  in  the  photograph. 


25 


sounding  the  alarm,  a  slight  delay  in 
the  arrival  of  the  apparatus,  a  slight 
delay  in  surrounding  the  fire,  delays 
that  totalled  only  a  very  few  minutes, 
but  those  minutes  vital  and  precious. 
Once  the  delay,  wooden  roofings  and 
copings,  and  insufficient  water  for 
such  unusual  conditions  completed 
the  combination  for  destruction. 

It  is  the  story  of  every  big  fire, — 
some  delay  in  the  beginning  combined 
with  some  unusual  condition  of  wind 
or  weather  or  water,  and  a  Baltimore, 
or  a  San  Francisco,  or  a  Chelsea,  or 
a  Salem,  or  an  Augusta  fire  is  added 
to  the  big  twins  of  '71  and  '72,  Chica- 
go and  Boston. 

Boston  will  always  have  her  nar 
row  streets.  She  will  also  have  her 
occasional  high  winds  and  bitter  freez- 
ing weather,  which  sometimes  com- 
bine in  such  furious  storms  as  the 
"Thanksgiving  Blizzard,"  which  left 
no  vestige  of  a  Portland  boat.  Mix 
these  some  night  with  fifteen  to 
twenty  vital  minutes  of  delay,  and  the 
fire  department  will  again  need  the 
helip  of  Providence  and  all  her  other 
neighbors. 

Another  message  of  the  Boston  Fire 
is  the  limitation  of  building  construc- 
tion for  fire  protection.  There  are 
many  in  those  days  who  never 
dreamed  that  fire  could  sweep  brick 
and  granite  buildings  out  of  existence 
in  a  few  hours.  In  fact,  there  was  a 
tradition  that  the  Fire  Chief,  a  few 
weeks  before,  on  his  return  from  a 
visit  to  the  Chicago  ruins,  had  said 
that  "Boston  could  not  have  such  a 
conflagration."  This  was  denied  by 
the  Chief,  and  unquestionably  was 
never  said  by  him,  but  it  passed  cur- 
rency with  the  indiff*erent  popular 
mind  that  wanted  to  believe  it  true. 

Today  men  place  their  faith  in  the 
new  "fireproof"  buildings  until  a  day- 
time fire  in  the  Edison  plant  at 
Orange,  sweeips  thru  a  dozen  buildings, 


seven  of  them  "fireproof"  in  less  than 
four  hours,  absolutely  destroying  their 
contents.  Until  a  fire  in  Chicago,  or- 
iginating in  not  the  worst  type  of 
low  buildings,  jumps  an  eighty-foot 
street,  leaps  high  in  the  air  and  with 
its  hot  breath  blows  out  the  windows 
from  the  ninth  to  the  fifteenth  story 
of  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  "fireproof"  building, 
and  in  less  than  two  hours  licks  up 
everything  combustible  on  these 
floors,  including  records  and  their 
containers,  with  a  breath  and  a  tongue 
so  hot  that  metals  melting  only  at 
high  temperatures  fuse  into  mixed 
molten  balls. 

Another  message  of  the  Boston  Fire 
is  the  fundamental  but  often  unap- 
preciated value  of  records.  The  testi- 
mony at  the  hearings  brings  out 
dramatically  "Your  fire"  is  always 
"The  fire,"  and  the  price  of  careless- 
ness is  exorbitant.  In  this  fire,  as 
in  many  since,  carelessness  in  fire 
preventive  measures  has  thrown  a 
suspicion  on  innocent  men  that  they 
have  never  been  able  fully  to  remove. 

The  enactment  of  the  present  Mass- 
achusetts Income  Tax  Law  brought  to 
the  tip  of  the  tongue  a  word  or  phrase 
with  hitherto  little  usage  "intan- 
gibles." In  connection  with  that  law, 
it  meant,  substantially,  negotiable  se- 
curities. The  same  word,  though  with 
not  quite  so  limited  a  meaning,  should 
be  adopted  and  used  far  more  exten- 
sively than  it  is  with  reference  to  fire 
losses.  Every  business  and  profession 
has  its  intangible  assets.  Some  forms 
of  these  intangibles  can  be  capitalized 
as  for  instance  "good  will,"  but  the 
form  most  affected  by  fire  losses  can- 
not be  capitalized,  —  namely,  —  the 
books  of  accounts  and  records.  Ordin- 
arily, the  figures  for  our  fire  losses  do 
not  include  the  loss  occasioned  by  the 
destruction  of  books  and  records,  and 
yet  oftentimes  the  net  loss  to  the  busi- 
ness man  from  this  source  is  far  great- 


26 


er  than  that  suffered  from  the  loss 
of  commodities. 

For  instance,  the  stock  in  trade,  so 
to  speak,  of  our  insurance  companies 
is  almost  entirely  comiprised  of  books 
of  accounts  and  records.  The  destruc- 
tion of  their  oflBces  would  entail  prac- 
tically no  loss  of  commodities,  but 
would  entail  a  loss  of  records  which 
form  the  substance  of  their  business. 
Some  of  our  great  department  stores, 
if  destroyed  by  fire,  would  suffer  a 
tremendous  loss  of  commodities,  and 
might  also  suffer  a  tremendous  loss 
of  intangibles.  With  their  thousands 
of  charge  accounts,  just  imagine  what 
confusion  and  loss  would  result  if 
their  records  were  destroyed  just  after 
Christmas. 

These  are  two  extreme  examples, 
but  the  same  principles  apply  to  a 
greater  or  less  extent  to  every  busi- 
ness and  profession. 

In  years  to  come,  perhaps  during  the 
lifetime  of  men  just  entering  business, 
downtown  Boston  will  be  comiposed 
entirely  of  fire-resisting  structures.  In 
the  very  nature  of  things,  however, 
we  shall  never  have  fireproof  contents, 
so  that  we  shall  always  have  fires  of 
greater  or  less  magnitude. 

In  fact,  our  hottest  fires  are  within 
fire-proof  buildings,  for  they  are  like 
stoves  or  reverberating  furnaces, 
cumulating  the  heat  to  extreme  tem- 
peratures, and  destroying  not  only 
combustible  material,  but  making 
shapeless  forms  of  metal  equipment 
and  implements,  and  even  fusing  por- 
celain insulators. 


Mr.  Young  had  to  take  a  chance  on 
his  stock  in  trade — he  lost,  but  was 
partially  reimbursed  by  his  insurance. 
His  safe  may  have  been  the  best  avail- 
able at  that  time,  but  even  then  he 
took  a  chance  with  a  door  that  would- 
n't lock.  But  if  the  safe  was  the  best 
available,  we  know  that  it  didn't  re- 
sist the  heat  to  which  it  was  subject- 
ed, and  Mr.  Young  lost  his  books  for 
which  he  could  not  be  even  partially 
reimbursed  by  insurance. 

Records,  like  delicate  commodities, 
have  fire  hazards  different  from  build- 
ing hazards.  Of  these  water  is  the 
most  destructive,  and  in  modern  fire- 
fighting,  water  in  superabundance  is 
almost  the  first  (principle. 

When  the  Fire  Chief  planned  an 
anniversary  exhibition  at  historic  box 
52,  he  had  to  caution  the  department 
to  turn  off  the  water  as  soon  as  it 
reached  maximum  height  (a  matter  of 
two  or  three  minutes)  for  fear  of 
flooding  the  cellars  of  the  neighbor- 
hood. No  such  consideration  would 
be  given  were  the  fire  a  real  one,  and 
think  what  it  would  do  to  the  records 
and  valuables  in  a  basement  vault 
with  the  usual  two  thin  metal  doors. 

It  is  significant  that  in  the  alley 
where  the  fire  started,  almost  on  the 
identical  spot  where  you  would  place 
a  commemorative  tablet,  the  fire 
shutter  that  protects  it  from  its  neigh- 
bors, and  from  one  of  the  worst  fire 
districts  in  the  city,  has  rusted  or 
broken  off  its  hinges,  and  has  for 
weeks  laid  against  the  wall,  a  me- 
morial tablet  to  business  men's  indif- 
ference and  forgetfulness  in  regard  to 
fire. 


27 


Progress  in  Fire  Protection 


By  THEODORE  H.  GLYNN 

Fire  Commissioner,  City  of  Boston 


ON  Saturday,  November  9,  1872, 
at  7:24  P.  M.,  an  alarm  of 
fire  was  sounded  from  box  52, 
at  the  corner  of  Lincoln  and  Bedford 
streets.  This  was  followed  by  four 
additional  alarms  received  in  rapid 
succession.  These  five  alarms  called 
the  entire  working  force  of  the  de- 
partment to  the  scene  of  a  fire  which 
had  started  in  the  basement  of  a 
granite  building  at  the  corner  of  Sum- 
mer and  Kingston  streets,  occupied 
by  Tebbitts,  Baldwin  and  Davis  as  a 
dry  goods  store,  and  A.  K.  Young, 
hoop-skirt  manufacturer.  The  fire  or- 
iginated in  the  basement  and  burned 
through  the  elevator  shaft  to  the  up- 
per stories  and  through  the  roof.  The 
illumination  from  the  fire  was  seen  as 
far  away  as  Charlestown  fourteen 
minutes  before  the  first  alarm  was 
sounded  in  Boston. 

The  fearful  fire  which  resulted  was 
the  greatest  catastrophe  which  ever 
visited  Boston,  and  in  the  opinion  of 
the  officials  in  charge  of  the  fire  de- 
partment in  1872  it  was  due  to  the 
unaccountable  delay  in  giving  the 
alarm.  The  report  of  the  commission 
appointed  to  investigate  the  cause  of 
the  fire  and  the  efforts  made  for  its 
suppression  states  that  the  fire  "raged 
without  control  till  the  afternoon  of 
the  following  day  (Sunday)  spread- 
ing through  the  best  business  portions 
of  Boston,  covering  sixty-five  acres 
with  ruins,  destroying  776  buildings, 
assessed  at  the  value  of  $13,500,000, 
and    consuming     merchandise  and 


other  personal  property  estimated  at 
more  than  sixty  millions  of  dollars." 

The  date  of  this  terrible  conflagra- 
tion marked  an  epoch  in  the  history 
of  Boston,  and,  approaching  as  we  are 
the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  disas- 
ter it  is  truly  characteristic  of  human 
nature  that  we  should  review  the  past 
half  century,  not  with  any  intention 
of  boasting  of  our  good  fortune  in 
escaping  a  similar  fate,  but  to  find  out 
if  we  have  made  any  real  progress  in 
preventing  the  possibility  of  such  a 
catastrophe  befalling  us  again.  In 
such  a  review  there  is  considerable 
cipportunity  for  comparison  in  fire 
conditions  of  1872  and  1922. 

In  1872  the  population  of  Boston 
was  only  290,000  compared  with  ap- 
proximately 825,000  today.  The  fire 
department  at  that  time  was  under 
the  control  of  the  Board  of  Aldermen 
and  the  Common  Council. 

As  the  size  of  the  fire  was  attributed 
in  a  great  measure  to  the  delay  in 
giving  notice  it  is  well  to  consider  at 
the  beginning  the  facilities  of  half  a 
century  ago  and  the  fire  alarm  system 
of  today. 

The  total  number  of  fire  alarm 
boxes  in  1872  was  164.  Today  there 
are  1,270  such  boxes  installed  through- 
out the  city.  The  modern  boxes  are 
known  as  the  "keyless  door"  type, 
while  up  to  a  few  years  ago  the  boxes 
were  all  locked  and  the  keys  entrust- 
ed to  the  care  of  certain  citizens  liv- 
ing or  doing  business  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  box.  The  delay  resulting  from 


28 


the  obligation  of  finding  the  key  be- 
fore sounding  an  alarm  is  very  ap- 
parent. If  the  custodian  of  a  key  was 
careless,  or  his  home  or  place  of  busi- 
ness closed  much  valuable  time  was 
lost  in  searching  for  some  other  care- 
taker. All  public  boxes  today  are  of 
the  keyless  door  type,  and  delays  of 
this  character  are  avoided. 

In  addition  two  or  three  private 
fire  alarm  companies  are  doing  busi- 
ness in  Boston  today.  These  com- 
panies install  private  fire  alarm  sys- 
tems in  buildings,  and  over  these  sys- 
tems alarms  are  transmitted  to  their 
central  offices,  and  thence  to  the  fire 
department.  The  systems  are  either 
automatic  or  may  be  operated  manu- 
ally without  delay,  thus  assuring  the 
fire  department  of  prompt  notice  of 
the  existence  of  a  fire.  Many  poten- 
tial confiagrations  have  been  checked 
in  the  first  five  minutes,  and  in  order 
to  accomplish  this  the  city  of  Boston 
has  extended  its  fire  alarm  system 
commensurate  with  its  growth. 

In  1872  the  membership  of  the  de- 
partment comprised  a  force  of  ap- 
proximately 475  men,  385  of  whom 
were  call  members,  and  the  other 
ninety  permanent  men  engaged  in 
driving  and  operating  the  apparatus. 
It  was  necessary  at  the  time  of  the 
great  fire  to  enlist  the  services  of  ap- 
proximately five  hundred  additional 
men.  The  pay  roll  of  the  department 
of  1872  amounted  to  a  little  over  $221,- 
000,  while  in  1922  approximately  $2,- 
400,000  will  be  expended  for  salaries. 
Today  the  department  gives  employ- 
ment to  1,400  men,  twelve  hundred 
of  whom  comprise  the  actual  fire  fight- 
ing force.  The  entire  department  is 
now  on  a  permanent  basis  and  there 
are  no  call  men. 

In  making  a  comparison  of  the  per- 
sonnel of  today  with  that  of  years  ago 
consideration  should  be  given  to  the 
type  of  men  in  our  department  at  the 
present  time.    All  appointments  are 


made  from  eligible  lists  established 
after  competitive  civil  service  exam- 
inations. In  order  to  pass  these  ex- 
aminations a  man  must  do  consider- 
able studying  and  also  be  in  first  class 
physical  condition  to  pass  the  rigid 
physical  tests  imposed  on  all  appli- 
cants for  appointment.  All  promo- 
tions in  the  department  are  made  in 
an  almost  similar  manner  which  in- 
duces the  men  to  apply  themselves  in- 
dustriously and  become  fully  acquaint- 
ed with  the  duties  of  firemen  in  order 
to  fit  themselves  for  the  examinations. 

In  addition  the  department  con- 
ducts schools  of  different  kinds,  fre- 
quent drills  and  inspections,  thereby 
maintaining  the  efficiency  of  the  per- 
sonnel at  a  high  standard.  These 
features  were  unknown  fifty  years 
ago,  and  cannot  be  effectively  adapted 
to  a  call  fire  department. 

In  1872  the  fire  department  consist- 
ed practically  of  twenty-one  engine 
companies,  each  having  a  hose  reel, 
or  "jumper,"  the  steamers  being  of 
small  capacities;  ten  hose  companies; 
seven  hook  and  ladder  carriages;  and 
three  extinguisher  or  chemical  com- 
panies. Of  the  twenty-one  steamers 
in  service,  six  were  located  in  the  city 
proper,  three  in  East  Boston,  three  in 
South  Boston,  three  in  Roxbury,  and 
six  in  Dorchester.  Of  the  seven  hook 
and  ladder  carriages  only  two  were 
in  the  city  proper. 

Today  our  fire  fighting  equipment 
consists  of  fifty  pumping  engines, 
three  fire  boats,  thirty  ladder  trucks, 
three  watertowers,  one  chemical  com- 
pany and  one  rescue  company.  In 
addition  the  department  maintains  a 
good  percentage  of  reserve  apparatus 
in  first-class  condition  ready  for 
emergency.  Practically  eighty-five 
per  cent  of  this  equipment  is  motor- 
ized. A  pumping  engine  of  today  has 
approximately  the  relative  value  of 
two  of  the  steam  fire  engines  of  fifty 
years  ago. 


29 


In  1872  the  fire  department  was 
severely  handicapped  by  an  epidemic 
of  a  horse  disease  known  as  "epizoo- 
tic," making  it  necessary  to  draw  sev- 
eral of  the  ipieces  of  apparatus  to  the 
scene  of  the  fire  by  hand.  It  required 
about  two  hours  to  concentrate  the 
total  force  of  the  department  at  any 
given  point  in  the  city  in  1872.  To- 
day, with  motor  apparatus,  and  op- 
erating under  a  modern  assignment 
system,  we  are  able,  if  necessary,  to 
mobilize  all  our  apparatus  in  any  part 
of  the  city  in  less  than  one-half  an 
hour.  The  cities  and  towns  around 
Boston  are  well  equipped  with  motor 
apparatus,  and  upon  call  could  as- 
semble their  men  and  equipment  in 
almost  any  part  of  our  city  in  a  very 
short  time. 

The  fire  department  carries  on  sixty 
percent  of  its  apparatus  what  is 
known  as  "deck  guns"  for  the  purpose 
of  concentrating  heavy  streams.  The 
high  pressure  wagons  are  equipped  to 
operate  streams  of  such  extreme  cali- 
bre as  to  penetrate  a  blaze  of  the 
greatest  magnitude  and  do  effective 
work,  where,  in  the  earlier  days  less 
powerful  streams  would  practically 
feed  the  flame. 

Water  and  fire  in  a  controlled  state 
are  two  of  the  greatest  servants  of 
mankind  today.  Either,  uncontrolled, 
present  a  problem  and  wreck  havoc 
M^herever  they  choose  to  strike. 
Water,  applied  in  proper  force  and 
volume  performs  a  great  service  to 
man  in  checking  the  ravages  of  the 
fire  demon.  When  we  look  back  and 
view  the  situation  of  fifty  years  ago 
we  are  amazed  that  even  greater  loss 
did  not  result  from  the  terrible  fire 
that  visited  the  city. 

In  1872  the  water  service  in  the 
down-town  section  consisted  of  a 
single  set  of  mains,  there  being  a  24- 
inch  main  in  Washington  street,  from 


which  a  12-inch  pipe  led  through  Bed- 
ford street,  and  down  to  what  was 
then  known  as  Broad  street,  now  At- 
lantic avenue.  This  ipipe  continued 
on  to  State  street  and  came  up  State 
street  connecting  again  to  the  24-inch 
main.  The  district  lying  inside  this 
territory  was  lined  with  6-inch  and  8- 
inch  pipes,  most  of  which  had  been 
underground  for  many  years.  The  hy- 
drants for  fire  purposes  were  of  an 
old  type,  with  off-sets  from  the  pipes 
on  4-inch  pipe,  and  having  but  one 
outlet  so  that  but  one  steamer  could 
be  connected  to  a  hydrant.  In  many 
instances  the  hydrants  were  many 
hundred  feet  apart. 

There  were  also  scattered  through- 
out the  district  quite  a  number  of 
underground  fire  reservoirs  supplied 
from  the  mains  by  a  4-inch  pipe.  The 
main  in  upper  Summer  Street  was 
of  the  6-inch  type,  and  without  doubt 
was  considerably  reduced  in  eflSciency 
through  rust  and  inside  accretions. 

Today  the  district  is  gridironed 
with  mains  ranging  from  36-inch 
feeders  down  to  8-inch  pipes. 
Throughout  the  greater  part  of  the 
district  there  are  three  independent 
systems  of  mains,  namely,  the  so- 
called  low  service  which  furnished 
the  general  supply  of  water  for  do- 
mestic, business  and  fire  purposes; 
the  high  service  which  ordinarily 
furnishes  water  for  automatic  sprink- 
le'fs,  hydraulic  elevators,  and  sim- 
ilar arrangements,  but,  nevertheless, 
easily  and  quickly  available  for 
fire  purposes;  and  the  high  press- 
ure service  of  recent  installa- 
tion, intended  for  and  devoted  en- 
tirely to  fire  purposes.  This  latter 
service  delivers  water  at  the  hy- 
drant at  the  necessary  pressure  for 
fire  purposes,  and  when  desired  makes 
the  use  of  portable  pumping  engines 
more  or  less  unnecessary.  Thus  Sum- 


mer  street  today  has  all  three  services, 
a  12-inch  low  service  main,  a  12-inch 
high  service  main,  and  a  16-inch  high 
pressure  fire  service  main.  This  aip- 
plies  in  a  general  way  to  almost  the 
entire  district  which  was  burned  over 
in  1872. 

The  hydrants  are  now  of  the  mod- 
ern type,  with  three  and  four  outlets, 
and  to  a  large  extent  connected  di- 
rectly to  the  main.  Where  off-sets  are 
necessary  they  are  of  much  larger 
size  than  were  provided  in  1872.  To- 
day the  hydrants  in  our  downtown 
section  are  spaced  approximately  125 
feet  apart.  Of  course,  in  some  in- 
stances they  are  much  nearer  where 
physical  conditions  govern  the  loca- 
tion. In  the  city  of  Boston  today  we 
have  aipproximately  eleven  thousand 
hydrants. 

Insofar  as  our  present  high  pres- 
sure system  is  concerned,  viewing  it 
as  an  uncompleted  system,  we  can 
easily  obtain,  at  various  pressures  de- 
livered on  a  fire  from  twelve  thous- 
and to  eighteen  thousand  gallons  of 
water  per  minute.  In  1872,  under  the 
very  best  conditions,  with  the  short 
line  service  under  engine  pressure, 
the  department  could  deliver  about 
forty-two  streams,  while  today,  under 
ordinary  conditions  with  300-foot 
lines,  from  our  pumpers  alone  we  are 
able  to  supply  one  hundred  and  thirty. 

In  addition  to  the  protection  pro- 
vided by  the  city  by  a  better  fire  de- 
partment and  increased  water  service 
there  have  been  many  other  achieve- 
ments in  the  past  fifty  years  which 
aid  in  eliminating  the  possibility  of  a 
conflagration  in  our  city. 

The  building  laws  of  today  define 
the  character  of  construction  per- 
mitted in  the  congested  area  of  Bos- 
ton. In  what  was  the  burned  district 
the  greater  percentage  of  the  build- 
ings are  known  as  first-class  construc- 
tion. Pire  walls  are  required,  as  well 
as  many  other  fire  stops,  which  result 


in  confining  and  retarding  the  prog- 
ress of  a  fire  once  started. 

Fire  prevention  is  taking  a  position 
today  along  side  of  fire  protection. 
Fires  can  be  prevented  as  well  as  ex- 
tinguished.   Just  as  the  medical  pro- 
fession today  is  expending  every  ef- 
fort to  prevent  disease,  so  do  fire  de- 
partments  devote   considerable  time 
and  labor  in  the  prevention  of  fire. 
In  the  Boston  Fire  Department  today 
we  have  a  division  known  as  the  Pire 
Prevention   Bureau.     Affiliated  with 
this  bureau  are  thirty  or  more  inspec- 
tors who  are  visiting  buildings  of  all 
kinds  in  all  sections  of  the  city  daily, 
noting  defects,  and  causing  the  cor- 
rection of  evils.   Many  of  the  hazards 
encountered  are  corrected  immediate- 
ly on  the  verbal  request  of  the  in- 
spectors.   There  are  found  occasion- 
ally   flagrant    cases    and  conditions 
which  require  money  and  consider- 
able persuasion    to    correct.  These 
cases  require  a  tremendous  volume  of 
actention  and  correspondence,  and  on 
account  of  this  a  force  of  clerks  is 
kept  busy  at  fire  headquarters  follow- 
ing uip  and  disposing  of  the  recom- 
mendations  of  the   inspectors.  The 
citizens  of  Boston  have  evidenced  a 
willingness  to  co-operate  with  the  fire 
department  in  its  efforts  along  fire 
prevention  lines  and  since  its  incep- 
tion the  work  of  this  bureau  has  been 
very  successful. 

In  spite  of  all  that  has  been  done 
and  is  being  done  Boston  has  prob- 
lems to  contend  with  which  are  not 
present  in  other  cities.  Our  streets 
are  narrow  and  traffic  is  congested. 
It  is  almost  impossible  to  overcome 
the  handicap  of  our  narrow  streets, 
but  the  traflic  situation  is  a  matter 
for  regulation.  Drastic  steips  should 
be  taken  to  relieve  the  congestion  of 
traffic  in  our  high  value  district.  Here 
a  few  moments  delay  may  result  in  a 
serious  loss  at  any  time.  One  flag- 
rant feature  of  this  congestion  is  the 

31 


parking  of  vehicles,  particularly  of 
the  motor  driven  type,  on  or  adjacent 
to  hydrants  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
put  the  hydrant  out  of  service  for 
immediate  use.  When  apparatus  re- 
sponds to  an  alarm  of  fire  and  such 
conditions  are  found,  the  engines 
must  turn  about  and  locate  at  some 
other  hydrant,  with  the  result  that 
the  most  important  moment  in  the 
life  of  a  fire,  so  far  as  the  defensive 
attack  is  concerned,  are  being  wasted. 
The  co-operation  of  the  citizens  is 
needed  in  correcting  this  evil. 

Congestion  of  traffic  did  not  inter- 
fere with  the  fire  department  in  1872. 
It  has  not  resulted  in  serious  conse- 
quences as  yet.  The  evil  is  growing, 
however,  and  unless  checked  at  once 
may  get  beyond  control  and  present 
on  some  vital  occasion  a  difficulty 
that  no  fire  department  is  in  a  posi- 
tion to  overcome. 

Time  and  again  the  question  has 
been  asked  "Could  the  fire  of  1872  be 
repeated  in  Boston?"  The  answer  is 
that  American  cities  are  not  fireproof 
in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word.  It 
might  be  well  to  quote  here  a  state- 
ment made  by  the  present  Chief  of 
Department  to  the  effect  that  "any- 
thing is  ipossible."  All  that  is  neces- 


sary is  an  unforeseen  combination  of 
circumstances,  and  the  entrance  of  an 
unknown  factor  in  our  daily  routine." 
It  can  be  said  that  the  fire  protection 
provided  by  the  city,  and  the  type  of 
buildings  erected  and  being  erected 
in  the  high  value  section  of  Boston, 
the  ipossibility  of  a  conflagration 
covering  the  area  of  the  fire  of  1872 
is  being  reduced  to  a  minimum. 

To  point  out  clearly  that  great  fires 
are  still  a  possibility  in  our  large 
c*ities  attention  is  called  to  the  fire  in 
Chicago  on  March  15  of  this  year, 
which  resulted  in  an  approximate 
loss  of  ten  million  dollars.  To  ex- 
tinguish such  a  fire  a  force  of  51  en- 
gine companies,  6  ladder  companies, 
7  squad  companies,  2  fireboats  and  4 
insurance  patrols  was  called  upon.  In 
pumping  units  alone  this  force  ex- 
ceeds the  entire  complement  of  this 
type  of  apparatus  in  Boston.  This  ex- 
ample is  not  cited  to  emphasize  the 
fact  that  there  is  any  great  possibil- 
ity of  a  large  fire  in  our  business  dis- 
trict, but  merely  to  impress  upon  the 
minds  of  the  readers  of  this  article 
that  it  is  unwise  to  rest  with  absolute 
security  in  a  feeling  of  safety  from 
fire.  I 


32 


PUBLICATIONS  DISTRIBUTED  BY  THE  BUREAU 
OF  COMMERCIAL  AND  INDUSTRIAL 
AFFAIRS.  BOSTON  CHAMBER  OF 
COMMERCE 


Budgetary  Control  For  Business — 1921 

Practical  Experience  in  Office  Management — 1921 

Commercial  and  Industrial  Boston — 1922 

Boston— An  Old  City  With  New  Opportunities— 1922 

Classification  and  Definitions  of  Ledger  Accounts — 1922 

Balance  Sheets  and  Profit  and  Loss  Statements — 1922 

The  Boston  Fire— 1922 


Of  the  Total  Production  of  the  United  States 


MASSACHUSETTS  MAKES 

70.8%  of  the  Shoe  Findings 
54.6%  of  the  Cut  Stock 
54.4%  of  the  Textile  Machinery 
45.0'%  of  the  Rubber  Shoes 
40.0%  of  the  Cordage  and  Jute  Goods  ^ 
38.5%  of  the  Leather  Shoes 
32.6%  of  the  Woolen  and  Worsted  Goods  ^ 
31.8%  of  the  Cotton  Goods 
31.4%  of  the  Cutlery  and  Edge  Tools 
27.4%  of  the  Envelopes 
25.4%  of  the  Stationery 
22.4%  of  the  Optical  Goods 
20.0%  of  the  Tools 
17.1%  of  the  Jewelry 
15.1%  of  the  Wire 
13.9%  of  the  Finished  Leather 
13.3%  of  the  Saws 
11.4%  of  the  Machine  Tools 
11.0%  of  the  Paper  and  Pulp 
10.8 of  the  Confectionery 
10.3%  of  the  Electrical  Goods 


